The World as a Mirror of who I am

 

Who am I and how do I know what makes me me? The probably most asked question since human kind exists and yet no one really can answer as it is intrinsically complex and individual as humans themselves. There will never be only one answer as it can be answered in all kinds of dimensions, depending on who we are asking. Asking a neuroscientist, a philosopher, a biologist, a chemisist, a monk, an IT-expert, a poor Indian woman or a US-millionaire, a young mother or a vagabond traveling the world, the answers will all be completely different as every individual will answer them from their own most valid point of view and how they see themselves. As a poor Indian woman can also be a young mother, a philosopher, a millionaire and a monk a traveler without a fixed home. Still each answer will carry their own truth as there are as many truths as the number of people that exist in our world.

Nevertheless I would like to make the attempt of looking at the question from a psychological or mental point of view. A point of view that's connecting all of us on a certain level and can therefore be valid for all people across the world. The complexity of this question most likely makes it extremely difficult for many of us to understand who we are or where to even start to define ourselves. In most parts of the Western world we define ourselves by different roles that we take in life. As a child, parent, employee, brother, sister, lover, partner, friend and so on. We define ourselves by what we've learned, what kind of job we have, which hobby, how old we are, which ethnicity we have, how much money we earn and so on. In most social contexts where we meet new people, let it be a party, the first date or a job meeting we will hear people introducing themselves by naming their age, job, family, career path, hobbies. I am the CEO of this and that company. I've studied business and now I have a small family, a child of three years and a beautiful husband, supporting me in what I do.

There for sure is nothing wrong with these information since they are part of who a person is. Only I find it hard to find any information in this introduction where I can connect on a "deeper" level with someone. These are different roles that we take in society and yes most probably most people can identify with them and therefore connect to someone talking about them - only my question is: Is that who I truly am? Is this how I know if I will get along with a person? If we are like minded spirits? If I can trust a person? Are these information that can connect us on a heart and soul level where true understanding, empathy and compassion grows for one another? For me the answer is a clear no. I think these are our social roles but not what makes us who we are, how we see the world, how we feel in this world or who we want to spend our time with. To find "our kind of people" it takes something else. And I believe this "else" is what we call values. Values are the core of our essential being that connects everything else in our life. Our view on the world, our morals, our thoughts, behaviour, feelings towards one another, our actions and who we like to spend our time with.

I think we all have met people in our life with whom it feels somehow like we cannot connect on any level, like there is something missing, like an empty space, a blank sheet of paper, like a lost leaf in the wind, where we cannot really tap into who they are. Nothing to hold on to. Too smooth, like we cannot touch them, slipping through our fingers without anyhing to hold on to in their personality. Why do we find it hard at times to get a hold of a certain person or who they are? Most likely it will happen with people who haven't asked themselves the question of their personality/identity before. People who seem to have no orientation or fix point on how to define themselves. What makes me happy? What am I living after? What is my purpose? What am I expecting of life and what is my role in it? What are my values?

I always found it hard to randomly pull these answers out of my own "boxed" mind as this is only MY mind and therefore only contains everything that I already know. How to be the person I want to be or develop even further from information that I not yet have? Funnily enough this part wasn't easy for me to figure out when now I find it very obvious. We need orientation. Role models. People who are behaving or living their life in a way that we find admirable. Finding role models I believe is an essential "tool" to find navigation through the jungle of who we want to be. Looking in our environment which people inspire us in our family, friend's circle, amongst aquaintances or even public figures who have done things or live in a way that we would like to adapt. In a way that inspires us to grow, become a different version of ourselves, inspire us to be better, feel happier whatever that may mean individually. Having ideals can be an endless inspiration of how to become who we want to be. 

But how do we implement our new inspiration into our personality? What to do next when I found impulses and orientation on what makes me me and who's values I share? Where do I start building it into my personality? And is my personality who I am? Is it my identity and where is the difference. From how I see it there is a difference between personality and identity. The term personality to me applies more in a context of characeristics, behavior, how one lives and acts. Certain individual traits, the unique blend of characteristics that make us a single copy. That make us unique in however many we are. I would say our personality if lived consiously is partially a result of our values that form our identity. When we find our values, we can start living them. Then and only then can we start building an identity that is truly aligned to who we choose to be. Obviously also people who are not aware of their values or haven't even found them have a personality. That's what creates the uniqueness. Values can be shared by many individually and form their identity, yet we all have different personalities along with it. Only when we are not awre of our values, I would assume that from time to time we will find ourselves in places that cause us feelings of discrepancy, disharmony, dissociation or indecisiveness in our reaction to a specific situation.

Example: I'm going out with my best friend. We want to go to a bar and later to club to dance and have some fun. In the course of the night I get to know a guy that I really like. I want to spend the night with him. Dance, drink, talk. At some point my friend is getting too drunk to get home alone. She's feeling sick. What do I do?

Probably most of us have been in situations like this where we want one thing but another one happens and we have to decide what to do in that situation. Follow our desire or do another thing that may cause us some sort of inconvenience. That's the choice we would perceive at first sight. A disbalance between desire and reality. Now we have two options: Option 1: I choose to stay with the guy I want to spend more time with and put my friend in a taxi, hoping that she would get home ok (or even let her go home alone). Option 2: I exchange numbers with the guy, ask him to meet again another time and personally take my friend home.

I think at this point it already becomes clear what the outcome would be. When we act based on our values that may have caused us an inconvenience at first it becomes our duty. It's the only decision we can make that will bring us peace in the end. Where instead of feeling a disharmony we will feel in aglinment with our choice, our actions, who we are, ourselves. We can literally identify ourselves with our own actions. On the other hand we also know how the opposite decision would make us feel. It leaves us with the opposite feeling of not wanting to identify with how we acted. Some people even fall into denial or hide the behavior that's not aligned with their values to keep up their ideal "identity" of themselves because they would like to be the one who brought the friend home. We all do. We've all done it and all will do it maybe from time to time. Only it can become very dangerous when we consantly close our eyes from the truth of our actions and start living in denial. It also denies ourselves our own happiness, creating repeatedly dissociation between our actions and who we want to be. When we become more aware of us betraying ourselves however and understand it pushes us away from who we want to be, we most likely will start making decisions more precisely, more carefully, according to our values. 

In the end we choose who we want to be.

Choose to be is the crucial point. Because only can we choose what we identify ourselves with, when we are aware of our thoughts, actions, beliefs and what's behind all of them. Where our belief system is coming from, what our imprints are, how we grew up, what we were taught from society, culture or our neighbors. All sorts of different influences that we've been exposed to since we came into this world conscious or unconscious. To understand what we came with and how we were influenced is the first step to choose if we want to keep certain beliefs or rather break out of them and build new ones. This is where values come into the picuture. It is a constant training. A daily practice to ask ourselves the important questions about life, the world we are living in and how we want to live to create a world that becomes more of a place that we imagine.

As I've mentioned before there are different ways to find our values as an inspiration can be to look at people who inspire us and who live in a certain way that we aspire to live as well. This can and most likely will include multiple different people for different areas of our life. Maybe careerwise I feel really inspired by Steve Jobs, Stephen Hawking is my ideal of how to explain the universe, my psyche I understand best by Stefanie Stahl and how I want to live my purpose is largely influenced by Mother Theresa. In the end I would love the gain the wisdom of the Dalai Lama. Now I can start extracting certain characteristics or values that stand behind their way of living. 

For example: Steve Jobs: motivation, discipline, hard working, connecting the world

Stephen Hawking: a fighter, innovater, researcher, put the universe in a holistic perspective

Stefanie Stahl: healing, helping, teaching, connecting people, helping personal growth, understanding oneself

Mother Theresa: selflessness, giving, kindness, compassion, empathy, curing

Out of these different personalities we could already build a small  part of what's truly important to us and what we would like to integrate into our personality, in our own individual way, modifying it to our personal standard.

We can simply also just ask ourselves from our hearts, out of our experiences what's right and wrong to us. What feels good, what feels bad.

Have we felt abandoned or betrayed before when a friend has made a decision against us when we have needed them? Loyalty. Do we feel this anger inside of us when someone who thinks he is superior attacks another person verbally or physically who he perceives as weaker or inferior to himself? Fairness. When we feel sad or lost we want someone to hold us and comfort us. Empathy. When we feel hurt we want someone to listen and feel our hurt. Compassion. Understanding. We get upset when a friend cancels on us at short notice. Reliability. It really frustrates us when people always blame the outside world when something is going wrong in their life. Responsibility. We get strongly irritated when people don't do what they say. Integrity. We want to be heard and seen for who we are without being judged. Acceptance, respect, non-judgement.

These are only a few examples of how we could find our values. Personally I find it really helpful to write them down, to see them physically, to know them visually. To be able to look at them every now and then and make adjustments. The more I engage myself into defining them, the more they become, the clearer to me who I want to be and what's important to me in my life. Naturally as life is in a constant movement these values will slidely change every now and then in the course of life and with more experiences as we all grow and change. Yet having a list of our values gives us the chance at any time to make adjustments and give us stability. Because what happens with the ones of us who don't know their values?